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Send Zendesk Tickets to Pivotal Tracker Integration – Step by Step

Mobile and online app startups face a tricky balance to get right: responding to current user requests and issues, while maintaining a pace of constantly iterating to create a better, more feature-rich app to release to the market.

Being responsive to early adopters and building a service culture is what gets a new app talked about, shared, and loved. Continuing to build new features and fixing bugs and errors is how an app builds its commercial appeal and widens its audience reach.

But what is the balance between being responsive and staying focused on new builds?

Developers can take 10-15 minutes to return to editing code for new features each time they are interrupted from their work, so progress towards adding those new features can be slow once they start responding to each user request or bug alert.

With CloudWork, app startups can now group and prioritize service responses by automating the flow of user requests and issues from Zendesk into an appropriate task schedule in Pivotal Tracker.

Read our step by step instructions below

Zendesk is great for managing user requests and responding to individual service needs: whether it be because a user has stumbled across a bug in the app or because they have just thought up a new feature they would like. Each new request or issue is created as a ‘service ticket’. Pivotal Tracker is a lightweight, agile project management tool for development teams in particular (although any business can benefit from using this handy management tool for tasks and projects). Each task or set of related tasks is set up as a ‘story’ in Pivotal Tracker.

Zendesk Pivotal Tracker Integration: Step By Step

How to Set up the Stream?

2. Now click on the Integrate button for the stream “Send Zendesk tickets to Pivotal Tracker”

3. If you have not authorized CloudWork to access these apps, you will be asked to activate your streams. Authorize access to Zendesk and Pivotal Tracker so that CloudWork can access apps to execute tasks (If you have already authorized these apps in CloudWork, skip to step 4.)

Remember, you can revoke access at any time. We never read, save or sell your data. CloudWork only accesses your apps in order to carry out automation functions.

4. Set up your preferences for this stream

You can use the following fields to fine tune what information gets sent to Pivotal Tracker. All fields are optional, so you can set up multiple streams to allocate specific types of Zendesk ticket issues to specific stories in Pivotal Tracker.

Tag: In Zendesk, you can start categorizing and adding notes to ticket items to help classify the type of issue being discussed. An app startup could label all Zendesk tickets that relate to a particular feature with a tag to help identify what feature is being discussed. For example, a startup could use the tag “presentation” to refer to their apps’ presentation mode feature.

Ticket type: Select from one of the ticket types set up in Zendesk (problem, incident, question, task).

Ticket status: Select from one of the status types set up in Zendesk (new, open, pending, etc).

Assignee/Group Name: You may have customized Zendesk with your various teams (groups) or staff (assignees), for example, in your startup all service requests may go to Rebecca who handles the majority of FAQ-type responses by email. In other cases, the problem may require a specific solution and needs to be routed to the development/coding team (dev team group). Perhaps specific development team members work on specific app issues: Yeison works on all iOS app issues while Sarah works on code related to the presentation mode feature. By using the tag label with the assignee or group name field option, you can route Zendesk tickets to a story queue in Pivotal Tracker that is reviewed and managed by the most appropriate person or team to respond.

Ticket created Via: Zendesk encourages app startups to meet end users wherever they are: communication can occur via email, Facebook, Twitter, a service support webpage, SMS, or phone call, to name a few! You can select to route Zendesk tickets based on the way they have been received. For example, perhaps all email and webpage requests are handled by Rebecca who first triages for all FAQ-type responses to avoid developers being overloaded with the same issues over and over. These could be routed to a particular project and story type in Pivotal Tracker. Maybe all Twitter-generated Zendesk tickets get scanned at regular intervals by the development team and should be added to a specific project or story set up for that purpose.

Project: This field is required for all CloudWork integrations sending a Zendesk ticket to Pivotal Tracker. You must select which project the Zendesk ticket is added to. You can set up projects first in Pivotal Tracker and when you establish your integration stream, your full list of project titles will be shown in the dropdown menu.

Story Type: CloudWork can help automate workflow of Zendesk support tickets and route specific types of requests and issues raised to the appropriate story stream in Pivotal Tracker. For example, maybe bugs get reviewed at regular intervals during the day by your development team, whereas stories labeled as a ‘feature’ request get discussed on a fortnightly basis when planning future app iterations. This helps your developers avoid getting sidetracked by novel feature projects when there are bugs to kill!

5. Click on the “Start Stream” button

6. Repeat this process for each of the types of Zendesk tickets you want to route to a particular story (or project) in Pivotal Tracker.

7. Done! Now the next time someone requests support via Zendesk, your development team will have the issue automatically added to the appropriate story and project in Pivotal Tracker, so they can address it in a timely manner but without interrupting their prioritized work.

Important Tricks

Here are some additional tricks to help you supercharge and fine-tune your service, response and development workflow processes:

Encourage your support and development team staff to plan together and identify the workflow requirements of automated streams linking Zendesk tickets to Pivotal Tracker. Remember, the goal for these integrations is to help your development team be more responsive and proactive, without getting overwhelmed with queries and sidetracked from project coding tasks.

Use the customization options available in Zendesk to sort and filter your support desk tickets as much as possible. For example, all tickets labeled with a particular tag might get added to a specific project or story stream in Pivotal Tracker to be handled by an individual programmer. All Zendesk question ticket-types might be added to a feature story stream for review fortnightly while all problem ticket types may be added to a bug story stream in Pivotal Tracker that gets reviewed twice daily.

Try and automate Zendesk tickets from their source to reduce errors in handling. For example, support tickets received via web-forms could be automatically routed into Pivotal Tracker stories to avoid misinterpretation by support staff who leave out details when summarizing the user issue.

Encourage users to take screenshots and to share software version details (such as the browser they used when accessing your app online or the Android operating system they have installed on their mobile device) when submitting bug reports so that developers can quickly replicate the circumstances and find the fault.